"Malcolm Payne: Illuminated Manuscripts"
2005-02-23 until 2005-03-12
Irma Stern Museum
Cape Town, , ZA South Africa

Malcolm Payne: Illuminated Manuscripts is presented by the Irma Stern Museum in Cape Town from February 23 to March 12, 2005. Malcolm Payne has worked in a diversity of media over the last thirty-five years. Besides creating work in painting, drawing, sculpture and since 1995 large video projection he has continuously produced works in all printmaking media. These new prints, notable for their brilliance of colour, animate commonplace objects of material culture, in particular those possessing little if not any explicit or overt signification. If a meta-text exists in the work, it reflects unambiguously on a post 9/11 warrior state mindset and other representations of global disquiet, including HIV/Aids and forms of sanctimonious extremism.

This is achieved through dissonance, both in the improbable affinities or groupings assigned to these (non-menacing) objects and how they are re-fashioned in powerful software applications that causes damage to their structural coherence. He deliberately conjoins these objects in a marginal union to provoke a balance between innocence and disturbing portent.

The artist has exhibited extensively both here and abroad. He represented South Africa on two occasions at the Venice Biennale most notably at the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995 with a solo installation. His work in video has been featured at the 13 Videobrasil, Festival Internacional de Arte Electronica (2001) in Sao Paolo, Brazil, on New ideas — old tricks, hARTware projekte (2001) Dortmund, Germany, at the 18th World Wide Video Festival (2000) Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and the 16th World Wide Video Festival, (1998) Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

His early conceptual artwork was featured in the landmark exhibition, Global Conceptualism: Points Of Origin 1950s-1980s. Queens Museum, New York, USA and the Walker Art Center (1998 –2000).

His work is represented in major international collections that include The Smithsonian Institution. USA, Yale University Art of the Book Collection. USA, The US Library of Congress. USA and the University of Chicago, USA, and is also represented in all major museums in South Africa. He has had museum solo exhibitions at the Johannesburg Art Gallery and The South African National Gallery in Cape Town.

Malcolm Payne lives in Kalk Bay, South Africa. He holds a full professorship in Fine Art at the University of Cape Town

Related Links:

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